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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2840 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026

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What do you carry in your pockets every day?

For me, it used to just be my keys, wallet, and phone. When I started to consider concealed carry, I realized that I had a pocket knife and pepper spray that I never carried around even though it's really not much more cargo than what I already had, and I just need to build the habit. I don't have the pepper spray oriented in a way that makes it very easy to get out and use, but the pocket knife has already been quite useful; at work, cutting off zip ties or opening packages is useful. At July 4th, other people handling the fireworks were asking to borrow my knife quite a lot. The knife you bring with you is a lot handier than the knife you leave at home! Even a dull one.

I also bought an OLight Mini 2 for my keychain. Pretty nice, though I think it's only really come in handy once or twice so far. It seems to be marginally brighter than my phone light, and a lot quicker to bring to bear. It was cheap.

Things I have considered:

  • A telescoping baton. Like the pepper spray, I was considering it for dog defense, mostly, but apparently it's legally questionable to carry one and actually ever use it in a self-defense scenario. I wonder if one would be useful for anything else.
  • A lighter. I don't smoke. When lighting off fireworks for the 4th, I was using someone else's long lighter for lighting grills, and it was very unreliable, bad for what we were trying to do which was synchronize 4 different mortar tubes of fireworks at once. I thought that if I had my own lighter, I could have just used my own and not been as frustrated.
  • A multitool. These are commonly carried, but I don't know if I would use most of the functions or not. Many people swear by them, though.

I recently reported on a series of stabbings that took place in Dublin at hip hop concerts, and a recurrent sentiment I've seen expressed by multiple people independently is that a person who brings a knife with them to a gig probably fully intends to stab someone at said gig, and the fact that they were carrying a knife on their person should be judged evidence for premeditation.

I cannot fathom why anyone would carry a knife with them to a social occasion. If I was hosting a party or barbecue and someone brought a knife with them (without a good reason, like they were coming straight from work), I would mentally strike them off all future guest lists.

EDIT: I got a lot more pushback on this than I expected. Give me credit lads, at least I can laugh at myself.

I cannot fathom why anyone would carry a knife with them to a social occasion.

I carry a small multi-tool on my keychain, and other than having to remember to remove it before air travel or large venue events with metal detectors, I've never stabbed someone with it in the almost two decades I've carried it. The closest I've gotten there has been on myself. Also useful as a screwdriver and small pliers. The knife on it is maybe two inches long and would be a very ineffective weapon. I know folks that carry a full-size multi-tool around, too.

Hopefully you wouldn't kick me out of your social occasions, but I suppose standards for edged "weapons" vary a lot by country: it'd be legal here for me to concealed carry a firearm many places I go, but I don't.

A multi tool or Swiss Army knife that's small enough to fit on your keychain, fair enough. I'm talking about a knife that's long enough to be used as a weapon, which the OP explicitly stated his is. I misinterpreted, apologies.

...What? I didn't say how long my pocket knife is. I have a "Magnum" Boker knife that says "440A" on it. It's a cheap shit knife.

I know you didn't say how long it was. As I said I was under the impression that you started carrying your knife as an alternative to carrying a gun, and therefore assumed it could be used as a weapon.

But looking at photos of that model, it certainly looks like the kind of thing I'd look askance at someone for if they brought it with them to a party.

I will keep this in mind if I ever have to account to foreigners for my knife. Nobody at the party cared, the house I was a guest in didn't care, my uncle found it useful enough to ask me to borrow it a few times because he left his at home, and a ~13 year old boy bragged to me that he had like 20 different pocket knives at home, which his father attested to as true. I think it's generally a good thing to have. If you wanted to murder someone here, you'd really want to use a gun anyway.

Yeah, I guess this is just a major cultural difference between urban Ireland and the US.

While not exactly a bayonet, a typical multitool could easily be used to stab someone to death. And to me and most people I know the blade on a multitool is easily the most useful tool on it, by a lot. So your being ok with someone having a knife is dependant on them also having less useful tools stuck on it?

I'm specifically picturing a multitool small enough to fit on a keychain, and I have a hard time imagining how something that small could be used to kill someone. How long would the blade on something like that be, two inches?

Most "US" multitools are based around the gerber style, which usually ends up around a 2.5" 'primary' blade. You'll see Swiss Army keychain knives that closer to what you're thinking and are someone common (if considered very much a 'for kids' product, especially Scouting), but the last time I've seen one of the multi-tool-but-tiny versions was well before COVID.

They may be more common on the coasts; New Jersey and Massachusetts have much closer norms around >3 inch knives than the midwest or southwest does.

So no Leatherman? The "standard" one has a blade a bit under 3 inches.

I guess it comes down to expectations. While a Leatherman could in theory be used to kill someone, it's hardly optimised for that purpose, and my default assumption if I saw someone carrying one would be that he uses the various tools on it (including the blade) for his job. I would certainly find it surprising if I invited someone to a party and they showed up with a multitool, but that might just be a reflection of the circles in which I move (there are no electricians, plumbers or other tradies in my immediate social circle). I would probably ask him why he carried it with him, if only to satisfy my curiosity. It wouldn't be an automatic "you are no longer welcome in my home" thing.

But if someone showed up to a party I was hosting carrying a knife (just a fixed blade, rather than a multitool), my immediate assumption would be that they were a drug dealer. I think this assumption is an entirely reasonable one in Dublin.

I think "social occasion" is doing more definitional work than "knife" here. "Concert" is very different from "barbecue." If a bunch of my buddies came to my house to grab a beer I wouldn't be surprised or shocked if one had a knife, if we went to a concert and one of them had a knife I might find it odd.

@FtttG was saying he wouldn't accept a knife at a house party or barbecue. I think that's pretty extreme and I hope if he ever visits the US, he keeps in mind a culture difference here. Folding pocket knives are just generally useful for opening stuff. I used mine to cut some cheese for a lunch we were having, too.

I agree that taking a knife to a concert or something like that is a bad idea, but in defense of knive-havers everywhere, stuff you get in the habit of carrying every day is very easy to forget that you have with you. I went to a baseball game on the 3rd and had to think to myself "okay, baseball game, no knife". If I already was in the habit of carrying it every day for multiple years, it probably would have been easy to forget.

Seconded. When it's part of your daily carry, it doesn't always register that it won't be allowed quite everywhere you go.

I did manage to convince an NHL stadium to let me coat check my knife at the customer service desk, once I gave them my business card and explained that I made these for a living.

I lost my best knife when I accidentally took it into a federal building in D.C. a few years ago. To their credit, the security officers offered to let me turn around and leave with it, but I was miles from the hotel by then. I’d even reminded the rest of my group to leave their knives at home or in the hotel, but my mind was overcome by force of habit. I’m still annoyed by it to this day.

I think it's important to teach the youth that knives are tools more than they're weapons, and alcohol is a social lubricant more than something to binge in private. I have a bunch of little (but very sharp!) knives in my elementary classroom I inherited from a previous teacher, and I don't let the kids use them very often, but I do want them to see adults using tools that require care to be safe. That's actually one of the art standards, learning how to use tools safely. I think it's a Scouting requirement as well.

You're right, I misread OP. I'm downvoting myself.

Mrs. FiveHour was once deeply embarrassed when the courthouse security took my leatherman off me at the metal detector when she asked me to come in and hang a picture for her.

Mrs. FiveHour was once deeply embarrassed when the courthouse security took my leatherman off me at the metal detector when she asked me to come in and hang a picture for her.

In urban courthouses in my state, trying to bring a gun into a courthouse will get it confiscated and the bearer will likely be charged criminally. In my rural area, they tell the person to take it back to their car. It's no exaggeration to say everyone here carries, and they carry so often they forget they're carrying.

Yeah I had the same happen although it was at City Hall. They said they were supposed to dispose of it, but luckily the security guard was a nice guy and held on to it for me unofficially until I came out.

What day to day tasks does this help with? I have a swiss army knife somewhere but there never seemed to be anything to do with it, so I'm curious about what I could use it for.

Whittling. Sharpening pencils. Cutting errant threads. Screwdriver. Letter opener. Package opener. Cutting an apple. Peeling an orange. Opening annoying plastic packaging.

I realize this is a common cultural difference even within the United States, but there's a lot of relevance, anywhere from opening packages to cutting zip ties to prying out heat-set inserts to breaking open containers to stripping cable to trimming plastic nubs.

My uses are a little more common than most people -- I carry the cheapest tantoized blade possible because I've had to derivit aluminum plate in the field enough that it's a parlor trick -- but still, I work in a field with soft hands.

I try not to carry to public events like a concert, but I'll admit I've had to throw mine away a couple times because I just forgot I had it on me and went to a venue that banned them.

What is "deriviting"?

I assume "de[-]riv[e]ting".

Sorry, typo. Removing rivets, generally from joined plates. If you ask a mechanic, the 'right' way to do it involves a properly matched good quality drill bit, but if you have a good knife or even a wood chisel (and don't mind permanently damaging the knife/chisel!) you can get almost all aluminum rivets out with just the heel of your palm, and some steel rivets out with a good hammer.

Is the tanto shape more conducive to this?

Yeah. You need a flat or mostly-flat edge a little wider than the rivet head; anything too curved will slip over the rivet, and anything sharp will dig into the surface of the plate instead. And they are much stronger, which matters more with decent quality knives than walmart-grade ones (440j isn't brittle, I'll give it that), but since you're using a knife like a chisel on metal, you want every bit of redundancy you can get.

While there's a few other cases the tantoized shapes make sense (uh, mostly leather or upholstery work?), for most cases I wouldn't recommend it.

tanto points are significantly stronger than a lot of other point styles. In addition, tanto-style blades are frequently chisel-ground, which is worse for cutting but better for this sort of thing.

I read it as removing rivets.

It probably gets most of its use cutting boxes, zip ties, those infuriating plastic clamshell packages, and once or twice has cut and stripped copper wire. Often enough that it's worth carrying around, but not used daily, and not always at home where I know where the scissors are. I can't undo zip ties by hand.

Yes, I see. Thank you for explaining.

opening packages, breaking down cardboard?

I see. I'm used to using kitchen scissors for that.

In my experience, a lot of people who carry knives are used to spending time outdoors. When you're out in the woods, in a field, etc etc, then having a tool on hand (even if it isn't the best form of said tool) is super valuable.

Are you my wife? She'd rather spend five minutes futzing with scissors to open a package rather than five seconds with a knife.

A pair of sharp scissors held open is a knife. In any case, I'm not criticising, it had just never occured to me before.

Yes, a knife with a blade for a handle. I severely chastise people I see using an open scissors as a knife.

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